


Under My Skin

by i_claudia



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-08
Updated: 2010-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-05 21:23:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_claudia/pseuds/i_claudia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s not the most beautiful woman in the room—her chin’s a little too pointed for that, her shoulders a little too broad—but something draws his eye to her anyway, distracts him again and again from the slender blonde he’s been trying to pull; something he can’t define.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under My Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for franticallonsy's "sex is not the enemy" fest and posted on LJ [here](http://i-claudia.livejournal.com/55260.html). (8 July 2010)

Arthur starts seeing her around the club he likes to go to on Saturday nights. It’s a relatively quiet bar; the kind of place you go to dance without losing your hearing, the kind of place you could have a conversation if you wanted to, which is why he goes. Maybe he’s a stick in the mud, but he’s left the days of too-loud speakers and people spilling drinks down the front of his shirt behind him gladly. 

She’s not the most beautiful woman in the room—her chin’s a little too pointed for that, her shoulders a little too broad—but something draws his eye to her anyway, distracts him again and again from the slender blonde he’s been trying to pull; something he can’t define. It’s a new feeling for him, an intriguing one, and he studies her, barely noticing when the blonde moves on to other, more interesting men.

He leaves alone that night, but he goes back the next week, pretending not to search until he sees her, hair swept back artfully, in a sleek dark blue dress. He wants to slide its thin straps off and skim his lips along her creamy skin instead, taste the curve of her throat and run his hands along her narrow hips. She’s with someone, a tall man with caramel skin and dark hair curling around his ears, and Arthur can’t tell if they’re friends or something more. He tries not to let the thought bother him, but unwarranted jealousy creeps in around the edges of his mind anyway.

It takes him another month of Saturdays to find the courage to send a drink down the bar: dry martini, two olives. He knows from watching her it’s the only thing she drinks, knows she likes to save the olives for last, pulling them off one at a time with her teeth, slow, savouring them.

He nods and tips his own drink to her when the bartender points him out to her, and she laughs but doesn’t move, accepting the martini with no more than a smile in his direction. He leaves that night frustrated and yet somehow excited; she’s made the old game new, different, and the novelty makes the blood thrum faster in his veins.

It becomes a routine: he sends her a drink, and she takes it with a glance and a quick smile in his direction. Sometimes she’s alone; more often she’s with someone else. The dark-haired man makes a few reappearances, sometimes in the company of a shorter man with a boyish face or with one of two beautiful women—normally Arthur would spend a good deal of time watching them, but he barely gives them a second glance, not when he’s watching to see if this week, this martini, will make a difference.

He isn’t expecting it when she does move. He’s become accustomed to the thought that he’ll only ever be allowed to look; when she takes the martini he sends her and leaves her chair, walking over to pull up the stool next to his, the hem of her dress swinging around her knees, he can hardly believe it. Her fingers are long and slender, beautiful where they’re wrapped around the stem of her glass. Piano hands, he thinks.

“Your health,” she says, raising her glass in a return salute before putting it to her lips. Her voice is lower than he expected, almost husky. He likes it immediately.

Her name is Marlene; she tells him she’s a singer. He tries to get her to tell him where she sings, but, smiling, she refuses.

“I’ll find out,” he tells her, and when she laughs he feels giddy with the sound.

“If you can figure it out you’re welcome to come and hear me,” she replies, cheeky. When she finishes her drink, she thanks him and gathers her little silver purse, giving him a fleeting peck on the cheek before she’s gone, out the door while he’s still recovering from the smell of her perfume. Something soft, subtle, almost spicy beneath its sweetness.

It’s more than he expected, and nowhere near enough.

It takes him a few days, but he finds the right people to ask, the right strings to pull, and on Wednesday he’s sitting at a table in a tiny jazz club, listening to the band get the crowd warmed up. The club is all dark reds and velvets glowing warm in the candlelight, the patrons mostly younger, enamoured with life and how hip they feel sitting in this smoky throwback to more golden days.

The trill of a trumpet is the only warning they get before the lights come up and Marlene steps out from behind the curtain, gorgeous in dark green silk, her hair pulled into an elegant knot. Arthur is entirely prepared to admire her the entire evening based on appearance alone, but then she opens her mouth and that deep, beautiful voice rolls out into the club, dark and rich with the music; he has to close his eyes, just for a moment, overcome. 

_We might have been meant for each other; to be or not to be, let our hearts discover._

She knows how to work the crowd, walks out and flirts with little looks while she sings, takes a moment to linger by a table with a couple with grey hair and gnarled fingers, singing as if just for them.

_Let’s fall in love, why shouldn’t we fall in love? Our hearts made of it, let’s take a chance, why be afraid of it?_

Arthur waits the whole night, waits through songs his father used to play late at night after he thought Arthur was asleep, songs from albums packed carefully away with the rest of the things Arthur’s mother had left behind. Marlene doesn’t give any sign that she’s seen him, but he’s a patient man and the whole place is dimly lit; it’s possible she can’t see past the stage lights as she jokes with the trumpet player between songs. He waits after she takes her last bow, waits until after the band leaves, waits until the other patrons trickle slowly out until it’s just him alone with the bartender and the soft music being piped in over the stereo system.

“Just a small one tonight, Vern.”

He catches himself just in time to stop his head from whipping around to look. She’s come out somewhere behind him, is slouched against a stool while the bartender mixes her drink. The green dress has been traded for a short, swingy skirt and a delicate cardigan, though her hair is still up, a few wispy strands fallen down against the back of her neck. Arthur swallows.

She doesn’t make him wait after she has her drink in hand. “So,” she says, draping herself in the chair across the table from him. “You found me after all.”

“’Course I did,” Arthur says loftily. “Never underestimate a Pendragon.”

_I’ve got you deep in the heart of me, so deep in my heart that you’re really a part of me_ , the speakers sing, just slightly tinny.

“I guess not.” She smiles, small and secret, into her glass as she takes another sip. “Noticed you halfway through the first song. You don’t exactly blend into the crowd.”

No, Arthur supposes, reflecting as he looks down at his tailored suit. “I came from work.”

She doesn’t ask the obvious question, just hums and works her way to the bottom of her martini while he watches her and the music plays on. 

_I’d sacrifice anything, come what might, for the sake of having you near_. 

He wants to lean in, press his face into the curve of her shoulder to see if she smells the same, that sweetly spicy perfume; wants to wind the flyaway strands of her hair around his fingers and pull her close, keep her there until the sun starts painting the clouds in the east. He hasn’t felt this way in years, had forgotten what it feels like to have his heart beat faster like this, thrumming wild in his throat.

_Just the thought of you makes me stop before I begin, because I’ve got you under my skin._

“Come home with me,” he says, impulsive, before she vanishes into the night again, before another week goes by where he can’t concentrate on anything but the memory of the dimple on her left cheek, the shadowed hollow at the base of her throat.

She sets her glass down, dragging her fingers around the rim as she looks at him, makes him wait before she nods, takes the arm he offers and follows him back to his flat. They don’t speak; he’s almost glad of the silence, takes advantage of it to steal glances at her, drink in the sight of her under the yellow streetlights and, far above, the shadow of a moon.

It isn’t until he closes the door behind them and turns to her, reaching out, that she hesitates, says: “You should know... I’m not—”

“I know,” he says. He doesn’t know when he figured it out; somewhere between the first time he’d watched her swallow, memorizing the lines of her neck, and seeing her in green silk, beautiful in a way beyond anyone he’s wanted before. It doesn’t change much. He still wants to peel her out of that thin cardigan and run his hands over her skin, press his fingers up along the insides of her thighs and up under her skirt, and he draws her close to kiss.

She sighs into it, arms going obligingly around his neck while he works at the buttons of her cardigan; it slides easily off her shoulders, and he pushes the straps of her tank top off as well, tasting the skin he’s watched for weeks now, following the soft fabric as it falls. She lets him kiss his way down her smooth chest, her breath catching when he scrapes his teeth gently over a nipple before sucking it into his mouth. He takes his time with her, worships every new inch of skin that appears until she’s melting into him, loosened hair falling down across her eyes until he pushes it aside, buries his fingers in it and kisses her deep.

They only make it to the sofa before she pushes him down and rides him hard, head thrown back and hair wild around her shoulders. The world goes blindingly bright when he comes, groaning as she tightens around him, and he reaches up to take her in hand and pull her over the edge with him.

They fall asleep afterward, tangled up together; with her skin warm against his he doesn’t even mind that they’ve ended up at opposite ends, her feet on a level with his face. He doesn’t mind when he wakes up, either, just [traces his fingers](http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh267/i_claudia/undermyskininspiration.jpg) over the muscles in her calves and up to the soft skin behind her knees. The morning has dawned grey, muted with the damp promise of rain, and the sofa is digging uncomfortably into his back but he is altogether disinclined to move.

She wakes when he presses his lips soft against the delicate skin stretched over the bones of her ankle and whispers her name.

“Morning,” she says drowsily, eyes still half-shut, not awake enough yet to be wary. He’s never noticed how long her eyelashes are before, the delicate sweep they make across her cheek.

“Morning,” he says, and when she pulls him up to kiss he goes easily, sinking into the strange new well of contentment she’s dug inside his chest while he wasn’t paying attention. It’s the last thing either of them say for a long time.


End file.
